Brides Of Privilege (v1.3), Page 2

  “Don’t be, Savannah. I like it. And at least then nobody’s disappointed when I come into the room and they realize I’m not Harrison Ford.” Harrison sat down in a facing chair, across the low cocktail table because he had the feeling that if he sat any closer Savannah might bolt, ran out, and he’d never know why she’d come here in the first place. “So, how have you been?”

  “I—I just completed grad school,” she told him as she twisted her hands in her lap.

  “And probably graduated with honors. You were always a great student.” Damn, but she was nervous. Was he really so intimidating?

  She nodded. “How about you, Harry? I read in the papers about how your dad has handed most of the reins over to you. Your own company doing well, and now this? In the article I read, the reporter called you a tycoon and a genius.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Savannah,” Harrison said, shifting slightly in his chair. The last thing he wanted was a discussion with any Hamilton about his finances. “So, how’s the family?”

  He watched as a rather becoming light-pink flush ran into Savannah’s cheeks, much more natural than the blusher she wore, in his opinion. “Annette filed for divorce last week,” she told him, then quite clearly watched for his reaction.

  “Is that so?” he said, happily surprised to realize that he didn’t give a damn what Annette was doing. “Too bad.”

  “I think she’s sorry, Harry,” Savannah said, and he remembered that Savannah had always had this way of trying to explain her sister, make excuses for her. Even six years ago. “I know that she broke off her engagement to you because she’d met Robert, but I also know she knew she’d made a mistake almost from the beginning. Robert O’Meara isn’t exactly... well, let’s just say that I don’t think he and Annette had much in common.”

  “Robert O’Meara must be sixty years old, Savannah. How could Annette have expected them to have anything in common? The man was as old as Sam.” Then Harrison held out his hands, signaling that he shouldn’t have said what he’d said, and that he didn’t want to pursue the subject. Still, he had to know. “So that’s what they told you? That Annette met O’Meara, then dumped me, gave back the ring, told me she’s sorry but please take a hike?”

  “It’s not true?” Savannah asked, her eyes wide. “I always just assumed—”

  “No, no, of course it’s true,” Harrison said quickly. “I did the gentlemanly thing and stepped aside. I’m only sorry I never stopped by your school to say goodbye. So, did you get a good grade on that paper we worked on together?”

  “An A, yes. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do much more than find some research materials for you,” Harrison said, moving to the small bar to pour himself a glass of water, and one for Savannah. His throat was dry, and tight, and he felt angry with Savannah for coming here, for bringing back memories he’d carefully buried. Still, he might as well get it over with. “And your father? How’s Sam?”

  She bit her bottom lip, turned away from him.

  That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

  “Savannah? What’s wrong? Is Sam ill?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not ill.”

  “But he’s not good?”

  Another shake of her head.

  “Savannah, we could be here all day, playing twenty questions, but I think you’re here to talk about Sam. So let’s talk about Sam, okay? Did he send you here?”

  That brought her head up. “No! I mean, no, of course not. He has no idea I’m here. Nobody knows I’m here. I don’t think I know why I’m here, but I can see now that it was a mistake.” She put down her glass, picked up her purse and stood. “Goodbye, Harry. It—it really was good seeing you again.”

  He let her take about three steps before he said, “Sit down, Savannah. Now.”

  Savannah sat down once more, put down her purse. But she still didn’t look at him.

  He let her dig in her purse for a handkerchief, dab at her eyes, blow her nose, and then he leaned forward in his chair and asked her bluntly, “Are you going to tell me your problem, or am I going to have to refuse to take you out for pizza?”

  His references to the few times he’d stopped at her school and rescued her from cafeteria food seemed to calm Savannah, and she took a deep breath, gave him a watery smile. “And you won’t let me have pepperoni on the pizza you won’t buy me, right?”

  “You hit that one right on the button,” he said, wondering if he should tell her that her mascara had run, so that she looked like a blond raccoon. No, he’d better not Her self-confidence seemed pretty shaken as it was, without letting her know her war paint had slipped. “Now, tell me why you’re here. Please?”

  She played with the clasp of her purse for a few moments, snapping and unsnapping it, then stood up, began to pace. “I’m not trying to make a break for it, Harry. But I can’t say this and stay still, okay?”

  “Okay,” Harrison said, trying to keep his tone neutral. He felt this insane urge to go to her, hug her close, tell her everything was going to be all right, just fine and dandy. But he doubted that she’d let him hug her, for one, and he was pretty sure hugging a Hamilton, any Hamilton, would be a lose-lose situation for him. “Anytime you’re ready, Savannah. And I promise not to interrupt.”

  She stopped pacing, turned and smiled at him. “Oh, please, interrupt whenever you want. I’m sure you’ll want to.”

  She bent to pick up her glass of water, drained it “Here goes,” she said, pacing once more. “Dad’s company is in trouble,” she began, then went on quickly, “I mean, really in trouble.”

  “That’s too bad, Savannah,” Harrison said, mentally doing handsprings. He was itching to hop on the internet, find out just how badly Sam’s business was doing, and at the same time wondering what he could do to help that business tumble over the last cliff toward bankruptcy.

  “Dad’s at the end of his rope,” she continued, picking up a small paperweight and passing it from hand to hand. “It’s Robert’s fault, of course.”

  “Of course,” Harrison repeated. “How is it Annette’s husband’s fault?”

  Savannah put down the paperweight and returned to sit in the chair across from Harrison. “Well, I’m not sure of all of this, but Annette said that Robert had promised to invest a considerable amount of money in Dad’s company, plus give Dad stock options or something in his own company. Sort of a wedding present, you understand.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Harrison said, barely able to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I understand. So? What went wrong?”

  “What went wrong is that Robert never bothered to mention to Dad that he was highly leveraged or that the Internal Revenue Service had about a dozen liens on his company, on Robert as an individual.”

  “In plain English,” Harrison said, “good old Robert was not only broke, he was in debt up to his eyeballs. Is that it?”

  Savannah nodded. “Dad’s lawyers and Robert’s lawyers kept everything quiet for several years, and out of the courts, but now both companies are in trouble.”

  “So Annette filed for divorce. Nothing like a loyal wife, I always say.”

  “Oh, no, no. Annette felt duty bound to hold true to her vows. She told me so. But then he— Well, he’s been unfaithful. She can’t forgive that, and I don’t blame her.”

  Harrison fought the urge to ask Savannah if she wanted another glass of water, to make it easier for her to swallow the pack of lies her sister had handed her. But he was a nice guy, he told himself, and Savannah didn’t need him telling her that her father was a bastard and her sister had all but whored herself for money. Except that whores get paid.

  Then it hit him. “Savannah, you aren’t here running interference for Annette, are you?’’

  “Running interference, Harry? What’s that?”

  “Forget it,” Harrison said, hoping he’d been wrong, and Savannah wasn’t here to talk him into meeting with Annette, listening to Annette tell him that she’d made a mis
take, that she loved him and wanted him—and his money—back. He was pretty sure his stomach wasn’t strong enough to listen to that. Besides, from everything Savannah had said, and from what she hadn’t said, he’d realized that she hadn’t a clue as to why the engagement had been broken off six years ago. Not a single clue. “I’m just getting paranoid in my old age, I guess.”

  “Oh,” Savannah said, and went back to nervously rubbing her hands together, so that clearly she had more to say. Maybe she hoped if she rubbed her hands together long enough a genie would appear and say the words for her.

  But, coming from Savannah or a genie, Harrison was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear any of it. Which didn’t explain why he opened his mouth and said, “Come on, Savannah. Tell me everything. I want to help. Really.”

  “I don’t know why I thought this would be easier than it is,” she said, almost to herself, then looked at Harrison. “All right, Harry. I’m going to say this fast, because otherwise I’ll lose my nerve. Dad has this idea in his head that I should marry James Vaughn. Do you know him?”

  Why had Harrison thought that nothing Savannah could say would make him think any worse of Sam Hamilton? Why had he believed that Sam Hamilton was already about as much bad news as he could be, and couldn’t sink any lower?

  “Jimmy Vaughn?” he asked, trying to imagine the loudmouthed, oily man with Savannah. Kissing her. Touching her. Taking her so obvious innocence and crushing it. The thought sickened him. “The guy’s been married about six times, for crying out loud. Your father shouldn’t let you within fifty miles of him.”

  “Five times,” Savannah said quietly, “and Dad has made it very clear to me that James would be able to save us from financial ruin if I agree to the marriage. Dad...Dad says it’s my duty to marry money.”

  “Sam Hamilton should ride a hot poker straight to hell,” Harrison said, heading for the bar again, this time to splash some Scotch in his glass. “You’re not going to do it, are you, Savannah?”

  “I don’t want to,” she told him, swiveling in her chair to talk to him. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Harrison looked at Savannah for long moments, then redirected his attention to the glass he held. He poured another inch of Scotch into the glass. “Go on,” he said, the words deja vu all over again running through his brain.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, Harry. Too much. Definitely. But we could consider it as a sort of loan, you know? And you’d get a piece of Dad’s company. I know James is supposed to get forty percent of it when—if he, marries me. And we wouldn’t have to marry. I mean, that wouldn’t really be necessary, right? It could just be a business deal. You help out Dad, he signs part of the business over to you. I know you still acquire companies, Harry, aside from running CMH. I read that in the article I told you about. If anyone could turn around Dad’s business, make it profitable, it’s you. The tycoon with the golden touch, just like I read in that article.”

  She stopped talking and stopped wringing her hands in her lap. She looked up at Harrison, her expression part determination, part terror, her huge blue eyes awash now in both ruined mascara and brilliant tears. “I know I have no right to ask this of you. I know that, truly. But I can’t marry James Vaughn, Harry. I just can’t.”

  “So walk away, Savannah,” Harrison said, knowing he sounded cruel. “You’re a grown woman now, not a child anymore. Walk away. And if you want to tell Sam to go to hell before you leave, you have my blessing.”

  “I can’t do that either, Harry,” Savannah said, gathering up her purse once more, getting to her feet. “He told me something last week, something I never knew, never wanted to know. I—I owe him.”

  “Excuse me? You owe him. How? For sending you to school? For putting a roof over your head? Give me a break, Savannah. Parents don’t tell their children they owe them. Not good parents.”

  “He’s not my father,” Savannah said, closing her eyes. “He told me last week, Harry. He’s not really my father. My mother confessed an infidelity right before she died, and told him that Annette’s his, but I’m not. My mother died when I was five. Dad— Sam’s known all this time. I’d—I’d always wondered why Annette and I look so little alike. Now I know. Now I know a lot of things.”

  Harrison felt as if he’d just been punched in the gut. He quickly poured some Scotch into a small glass, pressed it on Savannah as he took her purse and led her back to the chair. “Are you all right?”

  She took a sip of the Scotch, made a face. “I’m not sure, Harry. I’m still pretty numb, to tell you the truth.”

  “And now you think you owe Sam. What do you owe him for, Savannah? For telling you this pile of—”

  “He was telling the truth, Harry. He even showed me a letter from my real father that he found in my mother’s things. He was an air force colonel, and he died in a plane crash overseas before I was born. The—the letter was all about how he’d be home from Spain in three weeks, and he and my mother would run off together.” She took another small sip of Scotch. “So you see, it’s all quite true. I’m really not a Hamilton at all.”

  “Look hard enough and there’s a silver lining in every cloud,” Harrison muttered, then mentally smacked himself. Savannah was torn apart, an idiot could see that. And only a real bastard, like Sam Hamilton, would have deliberately torn her apart after all these years of keeping a secret of such gravity. Only a real bastard, like Sam Hamilton, would save up that secret, to use it when he needed to use it, needed a hammer to hold over Savannah’s head.

  “Can you help me, Harry?” she asked when Harrison didn’t say anything else. “I know it’s kind of crazy, but I feel that if I can help Dad save his company, I’ll have paid him back a little for what my mother did to him, how she hurt him. But—but I just can’t face marrying James Vaughn. And I hate Dad for asking me to, even as I feel I owe him something. I know that someone who comes in and puts fresh money into a business, saves it, is called a white knight. I rather liked that terminology.”

  She hesitated a moment, then gifted him with a watery smile. “I’ve thought about this long and hard since last week, and you’re the only white knight I know, Harry. You always were.”

  “Give me a minute,” Harrison said, seriously in need of clearing his head before he could say anything else. He’d forgotten, until that moment, that he’d suspected that the teenage Savannah had a crush on him. But it hadn’t occurred to him that she might still see him in the role of hero. It was a decidedly uncomfortable role.

  He knew that Savannah had no clue that her sister—half sister, he corrected—had been a very willing participant in Sam’s first stab at marrying his daughters off in exchange for money. Not a single clue. As far as Savannah knew, Annette had simply fallen in love with Robert O’Meara and jilted him.

  And yet, without knowing any of this, here was Savannah, coming to call on her old friend, her sister’s former fiance—her white knight—to ask his help in bailing out that same father financially.

  Definitely deja vu all over again.

  Except that Savannah had been offered to James Vaughn, not to Harrison, and she had magnanimously said that Harrison didn’t have to marry her. Would he just please help her save Sam Hamilton, a man he’d be more than happy to hand an anchor if the guy was drowning.

  “What happens if I help Sam?” Harrison asked at last. “You wouldn’t marry Vaughn, I’ve already figured that out. But what then, Savannah? What will you do then?”

  “You mean what will I do about my...about Sam? That is what you’re asking, isn’t it?”

  “That’s why you graduated at the top of your class, which I’m betting you did,” Harrison said. “So tell me. Are you going to stick around, wait for the next time and end up bailing out Sam again?”

  “The next time? You think there would be a next time?” She shook her head. “No, I’m not. I love Dad, I think, but I’m not blind to his faults. I’m not blind to Annette’s, either, although I wouldn’t want to speak badly of her, especiall
y to you. But I’ve spent a lot of years being the odd man out, and now I know why. I’ve had a lot of questions answered in this past week. But I can’t just walk away, Harry. In a way, I do owe him. That doesn’t mean I’m not moving out of the house if I can find another way to help him. I’ll go off on my own, and probably without looking back.”

  Harrison nodded. “All grown-up, aren’t you, Savannah?” he asked, taking her hand, helping her to her feet. An idea had begun to form in his head, and he needed time for it to percolate. “We’ll talk some more, but first let’s go get some pizza.”

  Chapter 2

  Savannah stood in front of the mirror in the rest room of Sal’s Pizza Parlor, wondering why Harry hadn’t told her that her mascara had run. She looked all smudged and out of focus, almost wounded.

  “Waterproof,” she grumbled as she wet a paper towel and rubbed at the smudges. “What a crock.”

  A middle-aged woman exited the single stall in the small rest room and Savannah stepped aside, to allow her access to the sink. “Thanks,” the woman said, soaping her hands. “Are you all right?”

  Savannah took an involuntary step backward. Was it that obvious? “Yes, thank you,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s good,” the woman said. “I thought maybe you’d been crying. Waterproof, smudge proof, possibly even hurricane proof, but I’ve yet to meet the mascara that can hold its own through tears.” She turned off the taps and dried her hands on a paper towel Savannah handed her. “I carry a small bottle of baby oil in my purse, along with the kitchen sink and any other essentials, as my husband would say. It works wonders on those smudges.”

  Before she knew it, the woman had rummaged through a truly impressive large purse and produced the bottle, as well as a travel pack of tissues. “Here you go,” she said, dripping a few drops of oil on the tissue, then handing it to Savannah. “Oh,” she added as she walked to the door, “and whoever he is, he’s not worth it. None of them are, trust me.”